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| Guercino (Giovanni Battista Barbieri) Abduction of Rinaldo ca. 1621 ceiling fresco (monochrome photograph, ca. 1900, by R. Moccioni) Palazzo Costaguti, Rome |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Battista Barbieri) Abduction of Rinaldo (Palazzo Costaguti, Rome) ca. 1621 preparatory drawing Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Domenico Cunego after Guercino Abduction of Rinaldo (Palazzo Costaguti, Rome) 1778 etching and engraving Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation) |
"[Denis] Mahon supposed that the fresco of the Abduction of Rinaldo at the Palazzo Costaguti was executed soon after [Guercino's] arrival in Rome in May 1621, that is, before he embarked on the decorations in the Casino Ludovisi. At the time, the palace was still owned by Costanzo Patrizi, treasurer to Pope Paul V. . . . Patrizi, who at his death owned Guercino's copper of St Francis Preaching to the Birds (c. 1617), may have become familiar with his work through his predecessor as papal treasurer, Cardinal Jacopo Serra. Guercino may well have left Cento with an introduction to Patrizi from his enthusiastic patron and admirer in Ferrara. Patrizi would thus have made an ideal interim client while waiting for the Casino Ludovisi project to get started. It has even been suggested that the Patrizi vault was possibly executed as a 'test' for Guercino to prove his competence before he was let loose on the complex Casino Ludovisi decoration. . . . The pose of the sleeping Rinaldo was reused, in reverse, for the half-length figure of the Penitent Magdalene [directly below]."
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| Guercino (Giovanni Battista Barbieri) Penitent Magdalene ca. 1621 oil on canvas Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Cento |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Battista Barbieri) Figure of Glory (Palazzo Lancellotti, Rome) ca. 1621 drawing for ceiling fresco Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Battista Barbieri) St Chrysogonus in Glory 1622 oil on canvas, installed on ceiling Lancaster House, London |
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| Guercino (Giovanni Battista Barbieri) St Chrysogonus in Glory 1622 oil on canvas, installed on ceiling Lancaster House, London |
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| anonymous copyist after Guercino St Chrysogonus in Glory 1622 oil on canvas, installed on ceiling Basilica di San Crisogono, Rome |
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| anonymous copyist after Guercino St Chrysogonus in Glory 1622 oil on canvas, installed on ceiling Basilica di San Crisogono, Rome |
"[St Chrysogonus in Glory], commissioned by Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1577-1633), was originally an integral part of the carved, gilt wood ceiling of the church of S. Crisogono in Trastavere at Rome. . . . According to [Pompilio] Totti, the structure of the ceiling was complete in 1620, and there is an inscription dated 1623 that signalled the official completion of all the works ordered by the Cardinal. The records of payment for Guercino's ceiling painting, a quadro riportato, were traced by Paola della Pergola in the Borghese archive: the artist was paid 300 scudi between 25 June 1622 and 2 October 1622. By 1808 the painting had been removed and replaced by a copy. The buyer was the artist and dealer Alexander Day (1773-1841). It was later purchased by George Leveson-Gower (1758-1833), 2nd Marquis of Stafford, later 1st Duke of Sutherland, and installed in one of the ceilings of his Stafford House, St James's, London, once the most valuable piece of property in London. The mansion was renamed Lancaster House in 1912, when purchased by Sir William Lever (1851-1925), 1st Viscount Leverhulme, in honour of his native county of Lancashire, and presented by him the following year to the British nation. (It now houses the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and is rarely open to the public.)"
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| Guercino (Giovanni Battista Barbieri) Magdalene with Two Angels 1622 oil on canvas Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome |
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| Giovanni Battista Pasqualini after Guercino Magdalene with Two Angels 1622 engraving Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Giuseppe Antonio Craffonara after Guercino Magdalene with Two Angels ca. 1820 etching British Museum |
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| Anthony van Dyck after Guercino Magdalene with Two Angels 1623 copy drawing British Museum |
"The church of S. Maria Maddalena al Corso or delle Convertite (formerly the medieval parish church of S. Lucia della Colonna), Rome, designed by Carlo Maderno for the adjacent nunnery of reformed prostitutes, was destroyed in a fire documented in a notice dated 11 January 1617. Its benefactor, Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini (1571-1621), intervened to help to rebuild it. The building works must have culminated with the placement of Guercino's painting on the high altar in 1622, the year cited by [Carlo Cesare] Malvasia and the date of Pasqualini's print. . . . Due to its position in a church on the Corso at the heart of Rome, this painting was easily accessible and so seen and admired by many artists. Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), for example, made a drawing of it [directly above] and Pier Francesco Mola was certainly influenced by it. Only after 1798 was it moved to the pontifical palace on the Quirinal and from 1820 to the Pinacoteca Vaticana."
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| Guercino (Giovanni Battista Barbieri) Portrait of Pope Gregory XV ca. 1622 oil on canvas Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
The papal patron who had brought Guercino to Rome, already seriously ill when this portrait was painted, would die in July 1623, after a reign of just over two years.
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| Guercino (Giovanni Battista Barbieri) Assumption of the Virgin ca. 1622 oil on canvas Chiesa del Rosario, Cento |
"The legibility of the [Assumption of the Virgin], with its dramatic di soto in sù perspective, is now somewhat compromised by the church ceiling being higher than it originally was. According to [Gaetano] Atti, it was not the picture's high location that prevented its requisition during the Napoleonic era, but rather, having brought it down to see it up close, the French commissioners declared it a worthless muddle and left it."
– quoted texts from The Paintings of Guercino: a revised and expanded catalogue raisonné by Nicholas Turner (Rome: Ugo Bozzi Editore, 2017)